


Make it easy to be near you

by withdiamonds



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withdiamonds/pseuds/withdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make it easy to be near you

"I'm fine, Dean."

When Sam was five, he fell down a flight of stairs. Okay, it wasn't a long flight, maybe two or three steps at the most, but they were stairs and he fell down them.

His knee hurt and his elbow, too, and there was a cut on his chin. Sam didn't like it, and he started to cry. Dad wasn't there and they had a babysitter, some lady that lived in the motel where they were staying. She was nice enough, and she tried to make Sam stop crying, but he wanted Dean.

Dean was at school, though, and Sam had to stop crying, because he couldn't cry all day until Dean came home. He didn’t really have that many tears in him.

So he let the nice lady clean the blood off his chin and rub his knee and elbow till they quit hurting, and he stopped crying.

When Dean came in from school, Sam almost started crying again, he was so glad to see him. But when Dean saw Sam he got a scared look on his face, so Sam smiled and tried to make him feel better.

"Sammy, what happened?" Dean asked, looking at the nice lady like he was mad at her. Sam didn't want Dean to be mad at her, so he sniffed and tried not to cry.

"I'm fine, Dean," Sam said.

 

*

When Sam was ten, some boys at school started picking on him for being short, and new, and for sometimes wearing clothes that were a little worn out.

Sam could take care of himself, he knew how to fight and he was a lot smarter than the boys who were picking on him.

He wasn't worried.

But one day the boys followed him home, back to the crappy trailer they were living in, and when they saw that Sam and Dean and Dad were practically squatters and that the trailer was almost falling down, they howled with laughter and tried to trip Sam on his way up the broken and cracked sidewalk.

Sam almost caught himself before he fell on his ass, but one of the boys, a tall kid with red hair, pushed him and he went sprawling, skinning his palms on the rough cement.

Dean came up the street then, walking with his girlfriend. Dean was only in the eighth grade, but he still ended up with a girlfriend at every school they went to.

The boys laughed and ran away before Dean even figured out anything was going on. Sam picked himself up and wiped his palms on his jeans before Dean and Katie got there.

"What's going on, Sam?" Dean asked. He looked angry and Katie looked bored. Sam knew Dean would go after those boys and kick their asses if he knew they'd tried to hurt Sam, but Sam could take care of himself.

"I'm fine Dean," he said.

*

When Sam was fifteen, he spent two weeks going out with a girl named Shelby. It only lasted two weeks because that's how long Sam, Dean and Dad stayed in the small town in Iowa where Shelby lived.

 

Shelby had long blonde hair and she smelled like flowers. She wore braces but her smile was wide and bright. The way she said his name made Sam feel like something good was bubbling up from inside. Not that he would ever tell Dean that; Dean would mock him forever.

Dad told them to pack their things early on a Saturday morning and they were on the road before Sam even got breakfast. There was no time for phone calls, just "get in the car, Sam. Let's go."

He and Shelby were supposed to go on a date that night and Sam watched the road in front of them with unseeing eyes, wondering what she'd do when he didn't show up at her house to take her to the movies. If she would think he had changed his mind about how she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, if she would feel sad, feel his loss, or if she'd laugh as if he'd never mattered at all.

They stopped for gas a few hours down the road and while Dad was taking a piss, Dean turned to look at Sam over the seat, an apology in his eyes.

"You okay there, Sam?" Sam, not Sammy, which meant Dean was trying to be nice.

"I'm fine, Dean," Sam said, and he turned to look out the window at Dad, walking back from the bathroom.

*

When Sam was twenty, he met Jessica Moore. He was terrified from the moment she said hello. Terrified that she wouldn't go out with him, that she wouldn't love him back, that she would leave him.

She did go out with him, she did love him back, and she didn't leave him until she didn't have a choice. But in all the time he knew her, he never stopped being afraid that he would lose her.

They had a fight once, a bad one, and she told him to go, to get out of their apartment. He left, feeling as if there were a hole in his gut bigger than the whole world.

He wandered around campus, drinking coffee at the Student Union and beer at the corner bar. When he finally got back to the apartment, Jess was waiting on the landing for him, her eyes red and puffy, her hair tumbled around her shoulders.

"I didn't mean it, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to leave," she sobbed, throwing herself into his arms. He caught her, his own eyes wet. The last person to tell him to go had been his father and Sam had no idea if he'd really meant it or not.

Two years later and he was still afraid to ask.

He went inside with Jess and they fell into bed, half laughing and half crying. They made love, frantic and passionate, and it was amazing.

Later, he called Dean's phone and left a voicemail, like he did every so often.

"I'm fine, Dean," he said. "Just wanted to say hi."

*

When he was twenty-five, Sam woke up in a dim, dusty cabin, stretched out on a blood-stained mattress. He was alone and he had an odd, tingling pain in his back.

He pulled himself off the mattress and made his way to a flyblown mirror hanging on the wall. He lifted up his bloody shirt and studied his back. He saw a healing wound, still red, the skin raised and tender, but it didn't seem too bad.

The door of the cabin opened and Dean came in. He looked scared and defiant and relieved all at the same time and he grabbed Sam hard, tugging him into a tight hug.

"Dean, ow," Sam said, pulling back out of his brother's arms, his back hurting in Dean's grip.

"Sorry, man, I'm just happy to see you up and around," Dean said, and he still looked spooked as hell.

"Dean, what happened to me?" Sam asked.

Deans told him something about a knife and Bobby patching him up. Sam remembered Jake, but not much else. As they talked, he could see Dean watching him carefully, almost covetously.

"Dean," Sam finally said. "I'm fine," even though he knew there was something very wrong.

*

When Sam was thirty, he came out on the wrong side of a simple salt and burn. The spirit was an ornery old cuss who didn't take kindly to being evicted from the stretch of highway he'd been calling home for the past fifteen years. Sam ended up with a broken wrist and a gash across the back of his thigh.

"How many times does that make for this particular wrist, huh, Sammy?" Dean asked as they pulled out of the clinic parking lot. Sam waved his cast at Dean.

'Dude, I lost track after the fourth time." He shifted uncomfortably on the leather seat, and Dean glanced over at him with a frown. "Doc Sally would know, though. We should have asked her."

Sally Weaver was the local GP and she'd patched both Sam and Dean up more times than either one of them wanted to count.

Dean stopped at the drugstore so they could fill the 'script for Sam's painkillers. It was always good to get in a supply, even if Sam didn't think his injuries warranted Vicodin this time around.

By the time they were home and Dean had Sam tucked away on the couch under about four blankets, TV remote in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other, Sam was ready to change his mind about the painkillers. When Dean handed him two pills, he didn't even argue, just swallowed them down and waited for his wrist to stop throbbing.

"You ever think the older we get, the more shit hurts?" Sam asked.

"Nah," Dean said as he settled into the chair next to the couch. "And who you calling old?"

"You, for one," Sam said. He relaxed back into the couch cushions, letting the drugs soften the edges.

"You're just getting' soft, living here like this," Dean said as he reached over and took the remote right out of Sam's hand.

Sam didn't think Dean really meant that. They'd been in the same place for almost a year now and Dean had shown no signs of restlessness.

"Speak for yourself, man," Sam said, smiling at the total inanity of this whole conversation.

"I don't know what to tell you, dude. If you hurt that much, maybe you left your balls back on that road." The words were teasing, but the tone wasn't.

Sam opened his eyes all the way and looked over at his brother.

"I'm fine, Dean."

And he really, really was.


End file.
